An “impressive” fireball even brighter than the full Moon ‘burst’ on Tuesday night over the town of Lomas (Palencia), and could be seen from the entire Iberian Peninsula. The bolide, as astronomers call these very bright space rocks, from an asteroid entered the Earth’s atmosphere at a relatively low speed of about 67,000 kilometers per hour and traveled about 67 km until it died out over Joara (León). It is possible that a small fragment barely the size of a raisin may have survived, falling to the ground as a meteorite.
The phenomenon, the first of its kind in 2025, was discovered at 10:08 p.m. by the detectors of the Southwest European Bolide and Meteor Network (Swemn Network), which operates at the La Hita Astronomical Complex (Toledo). These detectors are part of Project Smart, which continuously monitors the sky to record and study the impact of rocks from different objects in the Solar System against the Earth’s atmosphere. The fireball was also recorded by the detectors that this same research project has installed in the observatories of Calar Alto (AlmerÃa), La Sagra (Granada), Olocau (Valencia), Faro de Cullera (Valencia) and Marçà (Tarragona) .
According to preliminary analyzes carried out by astrophysicist José MarÃa Madiedo, from the Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia (IAA-CSIC) and head of the Smart Project, the rock impacted the Earth’s atmosphere at an altitude of about 86 kilometers above Lomas. Friction with the atmosphere was what made it incandescent, generating a fireball. From there it advanced in a northwesterly direction and became extinct at an altitude of about 23 kilometers above Joara.
The great luminosity that this car achieved meant that it could be seen from more than 600 kilometers away. He had numerous witnesses. «The first warning came to me from Asturias, it was the one that put me on alert. But I have also received notices on social networks from Catalonia, La Rioja…,” Madiedo explains to this newspaper.
Projection of the car on the ground
Throughout its trajectory, the car exploded several times, causing sudden increases in its luminosity. In total, the fireball traveled about 67 kilometers in the atmosphere before extinguishing itself. The size of the rock has not yet been calculated, although the researcher believes it could measure 25 to 30 cm in diameter. «As it entered the atmosphere at a relatively low speed, about 67,000 km per hour compared to the 200,000 that some meteors exceed, it is possible that a small part of the rock of between 10 and 20 grams could have reached the ground in the province of León,” says Madiedo. Still, “finding such a small meteorite is tremendously complicated.”
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